Audio 3:42
Home insulation industry told 'not to rock the boat'

Stephanie SmailUpdated
Fri 21 Mar 2014, 3:31 PM AEDT

The Royal Commission into Labor's home insulation scheme has heard the insulation industry was told 'not to rock the boat' when the scheme was being planned by the Rudd government. The director of the Insulation Council of Australia and New Zealand, Peter Ruz, is giving evidence to the inquiry in Brisbane today.

Transcript

PETER LLOYD: The Royal Commission into Labor's home insulation scheme has been told the insulation industry was instructed "not to rock the boat" when it was being planned by the Rudd government.

The director of the Insulation Council of Australia and New Zealand Peter Ruz is giving evidence to the inquiry in Brisbane.

The ABC's Stephanie Smail is covering the Royal Commission.

Stephanie, what has the inquiry been hearing from Mr Ruz this morning?

STEPHANIE SMAIL: Hello Peter. Mr Ruz was working for Fletcher Insulation, which was a New Zealand-based company in early 2009 when the scheme was being created. He was also the director of the Insulation Council of Australia and New Zealand as you just mentioned.

Now the Royal Commission is investigating the deaths of four insulation workers and if they could have been prevented, but the decision-making process of the federal government is one of the main focuses in looking at that, sorry.

So Mr Ruz has provided further insight into one of the meetings that the government had with industry in the early days of the scheme. Now he said he raised concerns at that meeting that three New Zealand workers had been electrocuted installing foil insulation in homes two years before the scheme was about to be rolled out in Australia.

Now that's been a big issue this week. All of the witnesses have been questioned about that, about what senior bureaucrats knew about the deaths of New Zealand workers. But this is the first time we're hearing it straight from him.

Now he told the enquiry this morning that when he raised the issue, he got a lot of stares from people, and that he had been given the impression by senior bureaucrat Kevin Keith who was chairing that meeting that he was being discouraged to stop talking about it.

So he said he'd been told not to rock the boat and that he certainly wasn't in a comfortable situation when he did raise those basic concerns.

Now he'd said previously to that meeting that he got the impression that Mr Keith wasn't interested in hearing about squabbles between different insulation groups. Now by that he meant that bureaucrats were under the impression that the reason that he raised foil as a concern was that his insulation company wasn't using foil or that, and that he didn't necessarily want that.

PETER LLOYD: Now in the evidence that Peter Ruz is giving today, is he making it clear how high up the food chain this alert goes to? Is he talking about telling bureaucrats or did it reach the level of minister or even the prime minister being told directly by him that he had concerns?

STEPHANIE SMAIL: Mr Ruz is saying that he presented senior bureaucrat Beth Brunoro with hard copies of news articles about those New Zealand workers' deaths so the way he's been referring it today, he was dealing directly with Beth Brunoro who was a director of the scheme but she wasn't has high up the food chain as prime minister Rudd, minister Garrett at the time.

So earlier this week we've heard from those three lower down bureaucrats who were in charge of the scheme. We've heard evidence about the pressure coming from the office of prime minister and cabinet to get the scheme implemented and that was mainly to generate jobs in the wake of the global financial crisis.

So yesterday Ross Carter, who was also an environment bureaucrat told the enquiry training and safety considerations were seen as red tape and a barrier to workers getting into the program, but the role of the highest levels of Rudd's government is still cloudy.

So yesterday there was mention of former senator Mark Arbib attending an early planning meeting and there was also brief mention of the environment minister at the time, Pete Garrett...